The phrase ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ is widely used for a reason, because it’s true.

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Human greed; it’s the cause of all grievances in the world. It’s what every war ultimately boils down to. Greed for land, greed for money, greed for control. If we look at what’s happening in Palestine, a ‘war’ that has seen over 30,000 Palestinians killed, where greed is concerned, people just don’t know when to stop.

What started as, according to Israel, a ‘special military operation’ to eradicate Hamas, a designated terrorist organisation, five months on, is still going on. We’re seeing innocent civilians being targeted as they go to collect aid in a period of famine due to the lack of resources being allowed into Gaza. We’re seeing kids orphaned and parents carrying bags containing their children’s ashes, yet they tell us that it’s still about ‘eradicating Hamas.’ ‘NOT a genocide’, they say…

But the fact is that greed has taken over, and that is exactly what it is… Power-hungry leaders a killing machine for which we, the masses, the innocent civilians, are the target. Not just Netanyahu in Israel, but Putin in Russia where he is, over two years on, still steadfast in his determination to turn Ukraine into a Russian state…

Why?

What is this all for if not greed?…

In the case of Putin: Ukraine

Netanyahu: Russia.

Elon Musk: Humanity (as in the advancements we are seeing in the world of AI).

To reference the quote at the start of this article again, 
‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’

Why do we need to be able to scroll on our phones with the use of our eyes? We have fingers for that… 

Why do we need self-driving cars, and implants that allow for telepathy? We have humans for that.

Nothing exists without contrast. With all the good that might come from AI will inevitably come bad.

When they invented the car, they invented the collision.

When they invented AI, they invented the downfall of humanity.

Tell me I’m overreacting if you wish, but the advancements that we are seeing in AI are genuinely terrifying to me. Sci-fi movies that show robots taking over, I’m not suggesting that this is what is going to happen here, but even Elon Musk himself has said how AI is going to be far more advanced than human intelligence, and with that, the lines between humans and robots become blurred.

What makes someone human?

Consciousness? 

What is consciousness? 

If we’re being told by Musk that in the future we will be able to import the memories of a deceased human into a robot, does the robot then become human?…

Not just a philosophical question, but an existential one too…

If we rely on AI to make art and serve us in stores and drive our cars and buses and trains and planes and diagnose us and treat us and talk to us then…

Why are we here at all?

We cannot let our greed for more, (always wanting more), be our downfall.

We don’t need AI, we need humanity.

I don’t need Chat GPT to tell me what a human is, I know what a human is. I know what humans need. Connection and love and a sense of belonging and passion and purpose, none of which AI can offer…

I don’t want AI to write me a poem about the human experience when we are the humans living that experience.

I don’t want AI to describe the feeling of sitting in long grass on a summer’s day, or stepping on leaves in the crisp of winter when I can go outside and feel those things for myself.

To ask AI to describe our own life is akin to when you’re at a concert and you look around to see everyone in the crowd filming it on their iPhone, uploading it to TikTok to impress people inside of their phone who they’ve never even met… 

With the advent of technology and AI, we forget that we are here, that we are human, that this is our experience, and that we have everything we need within ourselves. We don’t need robots to tell us what we need.

I went to a show in London last year, ABBA Voyage, and when I say it was the most bizarre thing I have ever been to… The show was performed entirely by holograms, people clapping for these projected holograms of ABBA on a screen: bizarre. Now, don’t get me wrong, it was very clever how it was done, and it was a great experience for people who were drinking, thinking that ABBA was actually in front of them, (the fact that the holograms represented how they looked in the 80s lost on them amidst the alcohol), but as someone sober, it was all just a weird concept for me to get my head around. Clapping before catching myself; ‘What are you doing, Lisa? No one is actually there. Who/what are you clapping for?’

After that wholly weird experience, I now recognise, at least for myself anyway that, when we go to shows, concerts, or whatever it is that we pay to go and see, we’re not just going to hear the music, otherwise we would’ve just saved our money and listened to it at home/watched it at home, we’re going for the whole experience. 

The way the performers react to the audience, 

the emotions shed, 

the connection felt, 

it’s all lost when a human isn’t performing…

I don’t want to clap for a hologram, I want to clap for a human, and I want them to feel the emotion I’m feeling and I want to feel the emotion they’re feeling and I want us all to realise how much more similar we are than separate, but AI is denying us of that, causing further division and separation. Those who can afford to ‘dive into’ AI sit at home in front of a screen in a land of make-believe, meanwhile those who can’t afford it sit at home wondering what happened to their friends/why they don’t want to know anymore (because they’ve been replaced with AI chatbots, of course, what else? Terrifying).

Terrifying that we’re wasting our lives like this…

Remember:

When you’re buried six feet under, no one is going to stand at your funeral reading a eulogy about how great that video you uploaded to TikTok from the Taylor Swift concert was, going through the videos clogging up the memory on your phone, but they will talk about how great that night was, going through memories that sit firmly in their head of the friends you made in the queue to the bathroom, the girl you kissed whose lips tasted like dark fruits, the night you fell in love with life. 

All the things that you, we already have, 
that work, 
that don’t need changing,
that AI cannot change. 

All the things that matter. 

‘If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It.’